Your 2022 by-elections in review! Many congratulations to Lib Dems across the country year this, as we won 51 council by-elections this year, including 30 gains from other parties (Conservative, Labour, Green Party and independents). This is a net gain of 25 seats – significantly more than other parties! Voters went to the ballot box in only one place this week, as the one and only by-election rounds off 2022 for Christmas. In Normanby ward in Redcar and Cleveland, we thank Tracy Jacobs for standing for the Lib Dems! A narrow Conservative gain from Labour, with multiple independents taking chunks ...
Embed from Getty ImagesTraffic, the band Steve Winwood formed after leaving the Spencer Davis Group, played their first concert at the Saville Theatre in London on 24 September 1967. That's what the books say, and what I said when blogging about my own appearance there with lovely Danny La Rue. But, when researching my post on John Masefield at Aston Tirrold, I came across the story of an earlier appearance by the band. Rob Southern tells the story on the music website Elsewhere. In the summer of 1967 he was working for Coxhead's Electrical, a company with branches around Oxfordshire, ...
What a year it has been! One day we are celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, and then later mourning her sad passing. We welcomed our new King, got through three Prime Ministers in as many months and have gone from the social deprivations of a pandemic to the financial deprivations of a cost of living [...]
Government cheerleaders frequently boast of how we are poised to take advantage of the opportunities available to us now that we are released from the constraints of membership of the EU. Soi far they have been pretty damp squibs: a few minor trade agreements organised by Liz Truss when she was the responsible minister and were merely "roll-overs" of agreements we already had within the EU. There was an allegedly more major one for trade with Australia which analysts claim makes far more concessions to Australian farmers than it doses of ours, leaving British farmers feeling let down and likely ...
Thu, 17:11: A milliday = 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. A centiday = 14 minutes and 24 seconds. A megaday = 2737 (Gregorian) years and ~331 days A kilosecond = 16 minutes and 40 seconds A megasecond = 11 days, 13 hours, 46m 40 s A gigasecond = 3 (Gregorian) years and ~62 days Thu, 18:18: A Darker Shade, ed. John-Henri�Holmberg https://t.co/NEjyWO4sfP Thu, 20:48: https://t.co/eFGtRo5sX9 Thu, 21:27: I have started marinading the boar. Fri, 07:11: Getting the day off to a good start. Daily Duotrigordle #296 Guesses: 34/37 1️⃣9️⃣ 0️⃣3️⃣ 2️⃣0️⃣ 2️⃣1️⃣ 2️⃣2️⃣ 2️⃣3️⃣ 2️⃣4️⃣ 0️⃣4️⃣ 0️⃣5️⃣ 0️⃣6️⃣ 0️⃣7️⃣ 2️⃣5️⃣ ...
Variations on 'I've never been polled and I don't know anyone who ever has been' are common amongst people sceptical about opinion polls. Who are the polls asking and can they be trusted if you don't know anyone who has been polled? Yes they can, and here's why. The most important reason is that polls do not need to encompass very many people in order to be accurate. A national poll typically needs only around 1,000 participants (see my piece here on why 1,000 samples are sufficient). In the UK with an adult population of over 50 million, that means ...
Thousands of commuters may be struggling to get home in the light of rail strikes and other disruptions on the transport network, but at least we can be assured that government ministers will not be among them. The Mirror reports that Rishi Sunak has changed the rules so his ministers can use their chauffeur-driven limos more. They say that the Prime Minister has amended the ministerial code to allow frontbenchers to make journeys to their constituencies in their government cars: The rules previously stated that ministers were "permitted to use an official car for official business and for home to ...
Benjamin Britten has done well out of this Advent calendar, and here you can sense his genius in extraordinary effects he gets here from a choir of boys and a single harpist. A Ceremony of Carols, of which this is part, was composed by Britten in 1942 on his voyage back from America, where he'd been when the war broke out. The words of "This Little Babe" are taken from Robert Southwell's Newe Heaven, Newe Warre, which was written in 1595. They describe the infant Christ battling Satan, and the first verse runs: This little Babe so few days old, ...
Just the one principal authority council by-election this week, rounding off the year: [IMG: 🚨] BY-ELECTION RESULT [IMG: 🚨] Normanby, Redcar & Cleveland By-Election Result: CON: 37.5% (+15.9) LAB: 34.5% (+2.4) IND: 13.8% (New) IND: 10.5% (New) LDM: 3.7% (-12.9) No UKIP (-29.8) as previous. Conservative GAIN from Labour. — ALDC (@ALDC) December 22, 2022
Scottish Lib Dem Leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has released his Christmas message: Christmas is a time for reflection, and I think it's important to take stock of the challenges we've faced over the last year. In February we saw the return of war to Europe for the first time in decades. The ongoing crisis in Ukraine has rewritten international relationships and prompted an astonishing wave of generosity from Scots opening their homes to take in those fleeing Putin's war. The soaring cost of energy bills and inflation has bitten into household finances, and our health service has faced unprecedented challenges as ...
A picture of the first Christmas tree in the City Square, taken from the Dundee Courier on 23rd December 1952 - 70 years ago today! Taken from www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk Image © DC Thomson & Co. Ltd. Image created courtesy of the British Library Board
